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Interesting how he critiques something cryptic in Scheme and doesn't show the Smalltalk equivalent. One thing that should have its own full section is performan
by throwaway7645 10y ago
Interesting how he critiques something cryptic in Scheme and doesn't show the Smalltalk equivalent. One thing that should have its own full section is performance as it is slower than Java, compiled Scheme, and I'm guessing V8 optimized JS. I know the whole hotspot JIT thing was maybe pioneered in Smalltalk though? I do like certain things about Smalltalk (Pharo looks nice), but it is hard to do certain things with it like a GUI. Well I mean it is hard to find out how to do that....not necessarily hard to implement.
- chriswarbo 10y ago> I know the whole hotspot JIT thing was maybe pioneered in Smalltalk though? As far as I'm aware the ideas used in hotspot began with Self[1], which was also the inspiration for Javascript's prototypical inheritance. Strongtalk[2] adapted these to the class/instance programming style of Smalltalk, then Sun bought them for application to Java. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongtalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongtalk
- throwaway7645 10y agoI stand corrected thanks!
- horrido 10y agoIn the article, I linked to: http://techbeacon.com/how-learning-smalltalk-can-make-you-better-developer http://techbeacon.com/how-learning-smalltalk-can-make-you-be.... This is where you'll see an example of Smalltalk code. Many programmers obsess over performance, but the fact is, in today's computing world, performance is a non-issue in most situations. That's why Python, PHP, Ruby, and Perl are so useful and popular. That's why Erlang/Elixir absolutely rock for concurrent systems. That's why Smalltalk is used commercially around the world. Performance is not the be-all, end-all of computing.